ONE Gas: Maximo Training and Change Management

“The front-end analysis performed by Mosaic was very insightful, and the change management piece helped prepare our employees for the process and technology changes. By the time we got to the actual Mosaic-developed training classes, our employees weren’t asking why, but how.”

Scott Shepherd, ONE Gas, VP Natural Gas Distribution

About Our Client

ONE Gas, Inc. is a natural gas distribution company providing natural gas distribution services to more than 2 million customers in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. Headquartered in Tulsa, OK, its companies include the largest natural gas distributor in Oklahoma and Kansas, and the third largest in Texas. ONE Gas serves residential, commercial, industrial, transportation and wholesale customers in all three states.

The Situation

At ONEOK, the Distribution Companies (called the ODCs) had a vision of “Becoming ONE” to align their technology, the organization and disparate business processes. The ODCs consisted of three companies: Oklahoma Natural Gas, Kansas Gas Service and Texas Gas Service. In the summer of 2011, ONEOK began to create their technology roadmap, and in February 2012, the Journey began — the project that would achieve the vision of “Becoming ONE” through a series of initiatives aimed at driving improvements.

Prior to the Journey, all three ODCs were operating under different processes, and using multiple systems and applications, which were never integrated. It was costly and inefficient. To add to the complexity of the Journey, in December 2014, ONEOK spun off the ODCs to create the natural gas utility — ONE Gas. The new utility was faced with the task of communicating all of these changes to its employees, and equipping them to use the new work management system and integrated processes.

Mosaic Offers a Solution

ONE Gas selected Mosaic to provide training and change management services related to the implementation of their new work management system, which included IBM Maximo for asset management, PragmaCAD for work scheduling and MobLITE.

Mosaic conducted a front-end analysis to identify gaps that needed be closed through training and communications, to define the organization’s desired performance goals, and to identify specific roles and job tasks that required training. Using findings from the analysis and information gleaned during meetings with key stakeholders, union mediators, executives and the workforce, ONE Gas selected 200 managers and supervisors to lead a Change Team. The Change Team was tasked with communicating to and coaching employees throughout the project lifecycle.

Mosaic created Visual Process Maps (VPMs) to provide a high level view of various job roles within the new work flows, as well as an overview of the new work management system. Mosaic also designed and developed role-based training curriculum for over 3,000 end users.

In order to measure and continuously improve the effectiveness of training and change management, Mosaic administered a series of readiness surveys over the lifecycle of the project. The surveys measured different audience groups’ strengths and weaknesses in understanding the new technology and business processes, and provided insight that helped guide change management and training strategies. User adoption is often hard to measure, but by the third survey, taken 16 months after training began, there was a dramatic increase in employee readiness and adoption of the new system and business processes. The surveys gave ONE Gas a tool for measuring ROI (return on investment), and clear insight into the success of specific project objectives.